Last week, I had the tremendous opportunity to join many of our state’s business leaders and job creators at Portland Community Chamber’s Eggs & Issues breakfast, where the economic engines of Maine’s economy exchange ideas and solutions to create jobs and grow our state’s economy.
As the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee and Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I know Chamber members and small business owners throughout the state and around the nation are on the front lines of job creation efforts amidst overwhelming uncertainty over tax, regulatory, and fiscal policy emanating from Washington. I am constantly impressed by their innovative efforts and commitment to grow their businesses and Maine’s economy in spite of such inhospitable economic conditions.
The fact is that we are at a tipping point. Unemployment has remained at or above 9 percent for 27 of the 32 months of this administration, manufacturing growth is at its lowest levels in two years and the economy grew at just 1.3 percent in the second quarter. Washington can and must change course by fostering an environment for growing America’s private sector, rather than simply bloating the federal government.
That means recalibrating our national priorities from those that are viscerally anti-private sector and anti-growth to ones that place America on a trajectory of global prosperity. Indisputably, that transformation must begin with a raft of regulatory, tax, and budget reforms that are the three pillars of my own economic agenda for watershed change for America’s future. They are: 1) a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that forces Congress to secure permanence of fiscal responsibility; 2) reforming our broken federal regulatory regime that is stifling America’s entrepreneurial spirit; and 3) reforming our fragmented, 25-year old tax code.
A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution would ensure fiscal stability and predictability from generation to generation, ending the fiscal shell games and brinksmanship over the nation’s budgetary sustainability. I expect a vote on a balanced budget amendment this fall as required by the debt ceiling bill that passed earlier this year, and I hope that we will once and for all impose the unbreakable spending constraints on Congress that Congress is clearly incapable of imposing upon itself.
The second pillar of economic growth is to finally end the regulatory rampage that’s an albatross around our economy, costing American businesses an astounding $1.75 trillion every year and the overwhelming majority of which are economic regulations that result in economic distortions that inhibit our ability to create jobs. The President’s own Jobs and Economic Competitiveness Council agrees. Jeff Immelt, Chairman of the Council, cited regulatory reform among the top four priorities necessary for job creation! Yet regrettably, just four days before Mr. Immelt’s assertion, my regulatory reform bill – the FREEDOM Act – gained 51 votes in the Senate but was blocked by the Majority Leader through inexplicitly established roadblocks.
Finally, the third pillar for incenting growth, which I consider to be an economic imperative for America, is a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s labyrinth and outdated tax code. There have been 15,000 changes to the code since its last overhaul nearly 25 years ago, and every year American taxpayers spend 7.6 billion hours and shell out $140 billion – or one percent of GDP – just struggling to comply with tax filing requirements. As a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, I have been urging this administration to champion tax reform and in fact, I led a panel on the issue as part of the Economic Summit at the White House more than two years ago.
Mainers are known for our hallmark characteristics – namely an unrivaled work-ethic and an unending can-do spirit that make our state’s workers the greatest in the world – that is, if jobs for Mainers exist. This is precisely why we in Congress must focus like a laser to create a climate ripe for growth and prosperity.
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